Other Happenings and Ponderings

I kind of left you on a cliffhanger with Sophie, and it's just a case of no news being OK news. The bute and/or time off has helped and she's much better but she's still not as consistently happy as she should be. She's obviously still getting checked out at month's end when the vet is back. No matter what, I do feel like there are some decisions to be made re: what my future plans for her might be, but also taking (a lot of) deep breaths and a time out from worrying about solving all of it instantly is a good thing. We'll figure it out when we get there, for now having time off in the field can't hurt.

Serenity needed

I ended up auditing the 'straightness training' clinic I had planned to take Sophie in. It was not at all what I expected but still super interesting. I had to suck it up and get past the part right at the beginning about x,y,z injuries being caused solely by bad riding...when x and y are things my vet will be investigating later this month.

Common sense and the google assures me that there are many causes for different injuries, and 'bad' riding may or may not be one of the many, but I struggle with a pretty icky feeling about that statement.

I'm glad I got over myself and stuck it out, because the clinic was valuable and left me with a lot to think about. At it's most basic level assessed a variety of horses, looking at their conformation, balance, and musculature. Discussion followed on how things could be improved, and exercises that might benefit each horse.

It was really neat to see how she evaluated everything from the ground and how well the clinician was able to predict things the riders/horses struggle with. I'm normally able to pick up on things like conformation and uneven muscling and how they might relate to riding, but this got really in depth. I left with a bit of a feeling that it's all repackaged things a good trainer would note and help you with anyway - building a balanced and even horse via correct riding or exercise isn't a new concept, but breaking it down into little pieces on the ground by really evaluating the horse in front of you felt useful to me. (and you know I ran home with it all fresh in my mind and made sure I wasn't barn blind and missing any red flags of 'bad riding' (yes I'm still a little irked) re: Sophie)

Feeling better because she’s much more active than she was. Chaos levels were disturbingly low for a few weeks there.

In other news, I'm sure you can figure out I'm in a bit of a funk about my currently NQR Banana Pony, but the babies have been doing a good job of distracting me. I took Tradey/Reggie to baby pony kindergarten last week and he was a rock star. Literally, I think he believes he is one, because he strolled in like he owned the place and proceeded to pose and show off and generally gave off a 'look at me' vibe. Not short on confidence, this one. He kept a lid on his more chaotic feelings and I left feeling pretty proud of the little guy - trailering solo to a new area with strange horses and expected to keep all four feet on the ground for an entire hour was a big ask and I truly was mentally prepared for all sorts of shenanigans. I have zero pictures, which I really regret. Next time!

But this is cute, right? They nap from about 12-2 every afternoon. It’s adorable.

Bakari/Buck (I need to start calling them by their barn names - I'm randomly calling them both 'Buddy' then pulling out their registered names if someone needs further clarification). Anyway, Buck. Buck scared himself a little during trailer loading practice the other day and had a little setback with that. He's not so confident and he's also smart, so it's taken a few days to get him settled again. His adventures are going to be put on hold until there is a little more money in the trust bank...I don't think loading him up and taking him to pony kindergarten when he's still a little suspicious is the best plan - he's not the type to forgive and get on with things if you push it.

Buck has a full sister! I want her

There is a family resemblance, I think:) Buck (and his momma) are technically smokey black, in case you’re wondering how a black mare and a chestnut stallion made a palomino this time.

Everybody is acting super herd bound right now. Spring is here and there are springtime feelings. Might give you context why I'm so pleased Reggie acted semi grown up for his outing last week - his normal self is 2000% chaos and bad choices and bullying his friends. We're at a point where gelding is going to make everyone's life easier. He's not awful, but I already see it being more and more of a job to keep on top of the studdy behaviour.

I don’t even want to get in to how many fence repairs this guy caused last week. 

Buck is actually the most civil of everyone, but he worries when everyone else is acting like an idiot. I feel like he's wondering if he should also be super dramatic but he's still very babylike and not sure what the fuss is about and why the other two are being so weird <3 I miss Bridget, I think I made a tactical error because she'd be an excellent role model for babies, where Sophie is more about encouraging chaos and poor life choices.

Springtime Sophie, looking peaceful (it’s a trick tho, don’t fall for it)

Happy Birthday!

In a case of time making no sense at all, how has it possibly been one year since they were born, but also, why is taking so long for them to grow up, I'm itching to ride them already!

Trademark/Tradey/Reggie is only10 days older than his 'brother' Bakari/Buck and they are of course both Welsh Cobs from the same farm. The similarities end there, and I'm here for it. I'm glad we opted for two different types, especially after waffling over it for months and very nearly doubling down on the more sporty type. 

I'm really, really liking little Buck. He's sensistive and spicy enough to be interesting and he's just genuinely a good guy. I like his look and I feel like once he's mature he's going to be pretty close to what I have in my mind as an ideal cob. I can see him being a really nice all arounder and fitting the 'Bridget, but a little more' cob I've wanted.

Half my pictures of him in motion make him look like a little round ball

And he kind of is. He's also pretty bum high at the moment.

Reggie currently encapsulates all the reasons I always felt a little more like a mare person. He's into literally everything, everything is a game, he's perpetually got nicks and scrapes all over him from making impulsive decisions. He's currently the equine equivalent of a very cocky teenage boy, and there are days I I love him and am exhausted by him in equal measure :) I feel bad for little Buck some days, because not only is Reggie a lot more energetic, he is a lot more athletic, so he's still fresh and ready for more play time when Buck is ready for a bath and a nap. He's a pretty stunning mover (I need to up my game and get video of his canter for you) and I feel very lucky he landed here with me.

currently looking quite leggy and refined

also standing still for pictures this day, good boy!

normal status is cantering everywhere he goes, then scaring himself

Both boys are enrolled in pony kindergarten, starting this week. Our little equine community luckily has a couple of other people with younger horses so we've planning weekly meetups as an excuse to get them out for little adventures and some low key groundwork. I'm thinking I'll alternate taking them because pony adventures and exposure to new things are geat, but also they're too young for jobs and there's no real training needed or required at this point, let them grow up a little more :)

growing up is hard work

It doesn't feel OK today

Sophie had her bodywork appointment last week. Interestingly, after all my concerns about the saddle, she's not actually sore in a way that relates to saddle fit, tack, or rider. After being so hyper focused on tack and correct work for the pony it’s felt a little weird to wrap my head around it not being that, probably it never has been that. If you press me I still don’t/won’t feel confident about that saddle, but it seems we’ve moved on for now. 

The bad news is that whatever is going on isn’t magically resolving itself with a saddle fitting and massage appointment (or so far, time off). The good news is the vet was here and took a quick look and agreed we are looking at something hind end/back related and has a few things she’d like to investigate, none of which felt like anything I wanted to hear. Some of it felt quite scary, in fact.

 For now we do a bute trial, and Sophie stays out of work until the vet comes back. It wasn’t felt like it was necessary to trailer her over to the clinic now (it would be a long day in the trailer for a sore pony), but that is an option that’s available. I'll probably take her if she's feeling worse or I can't handle the not knowing. 

Of course we can go down the rabbit hole to infinity and wonder if the 'saddle fit issues' or the ulcers last summer or the weird quirky things she does or even why she’s always carried her tail to the left have all actually been caused or at least concurrent with something else…horses are nothing if not walking red flags. 

That being said, she’s bright and happy and sociable and is currently enjoying Head Lawnmower and Baby Pony Protector status.

It's dirty work, but someone has to do it.

It feels very indulgent to admit that this kind of just feels like the one more thing that's finally breaking me. While there are plenty of great things going on, from a riding my pony perspective the last year has felt like a series of setbacks between us both, and prior to that of course I was worried about scaling Bridget back to an appropriate level and keeping her hocks happy with minimal vet intervention. I’m just feeling tired and beat up and like it's been forever since I got to ride and enjoy my horses without any reservations.

Fingers crossed this is just a minor blip on the radar. I'll take feeling dumb about posting here being dramatic and overly worried in exchange for a sound and happy pony any day. But, I thought if anyone understands the stress and worry that comes with your horse not feeling themselves, it’s this community of bloggers and supporters (who I very much appreciate!)

Life's A Beach

So I went a little overboard with the arena sand. Not in an "I've definitely messed this up!" sort of way, but more like I exceeded the scope of the current project. I was planning to put down maybe 1/2" of bedding sand to compact, mesh and settle with the base for a bit before adding more for footing. 

Two giant dumps trucks weren't quite enough for that plan, so we ended up with a third truck and suddenly what feels like so.much.sand. The amount makes some sense -  dump truck loads are a rather large measurement for our little space and the reality is I wasn't going to pay time and delivery for 25% of a truck, when eventually I was going to need more anyway. Smart financial choices, right?

Bring me all the sand. Seriously, load that thing to the brim.

The critical mistake I made here is not booking a bobcat or tractor to spread such a large quantity of material. In my little budget conscious mind, raking and dragging a thin layer of sand is a doable thing and I was saving money for later. Future Me could not feel guilty about hiring the fancy truck that sprays the sand around evenly once we were talking footing. Now we're kind of in a middle realm where it's not quite enough to be the 'forever footing', but also it's too cushy to just be part of a base layer and I might as well plan to ride on it as soon as it packs a little.

My current reality is that with the extra almost a full truck and the fact that a lot of it ended up at the north end of the space, me and my little landscape rake plan seems laughable.

Going to have abs and arms of steel, at least

Being a crazy and determined and poor horse girl, I did rake an entire thin layer covering the gravel base. Eventually though, faced with a significant amount left, resorted to google and youtube (literally "how do I spread and level sand without a tractor" and found a multitude of how to videos - mostly involving middle aged white guys obsessed with having the perfect level lawn, but also a few nuggets of wisdom from handy people who built their own arena drags and DIY levellers.

Welding is beyond me, and I don't have scrap metal laying around. I do however, have a bunch of wood from house renos. And a truck.

Behold, my thing of beauty, made from old window trim and two old front entrance stair treads. Two gate chains to attach it to the bar from our regular chain harrow:

I noticed the nosy neighbour creeping my latest crazy idea and was fully prepared for him to have some great dinner conversation with his wife about my latest failure once it imploded. 

But NO! It works!  

looks like progress to me

I mean I could dive in and improve it, but it's getting dismantled and returning to the parts shed when I am done, so my commitment level is not high. It works and that's literally all my aching arms need at the moment. 

getting closer to being rideable!

I won't lie, I see all the horror stories online of all the multitude of ways ring building projects can go wrong and I'm having a bit of anxiety about how uneven it is...but also, we're not done spreading it. And worst case, time and a tractor will fix it.

Weekend Scenes and Further Arena Building

 We went from snow last week, to summer temperatures this week. The ponies are all well started shedding their winter coats, but I think we were all feeling the surprise destination vacation temperatures (and I managed to get a sunburn).

Cherry blossoms appearing!

The big project this week was that we had a giant dump truck load of sand delivered for the riding arena. I probably haven't discussed here, but this project is taking forever partly because we essentially live on an island and the materials available are the materials available locally. I checked into barging some in from the lower coast and it's just way too cost prohibitive. The local pits sell drain rock, 3/4minus/road base, bigger granite rock sizes...and sand. We don't have the crush rock/limestone/clay/whatever you'd normally use to cap an arena. 

Chief inspector

There are a couple of local arenas I like the feel of, so I'm just trying to do what they did, which means giving the base a winter to settle, then re leveling and adding a super thin layer of sand on top and compacting that. There's a sand locally that has a bit of clay and fines that seems to do the trick as a nice 'mid layer' between the base and the footing. The thing with this plan is that I just spent three days of my life raking and dragging and levelling 1" of sand around a 80x120' space. For the right person, this might have felt very meditative zen garden, but I'm not that person. The temptation to skip this step and just dump some footing on top and call it good felt very very real even about an hour into raking and spreading :) But, it will all be worth it in the end, right?

yellow labrapony loves to 'help'

Other than that, I kept busy prepping the garden and replacing some fence and harrowing and planting more grass seed in the front so the horses can go out there again. 

Is not allowed in the garden but would like to be

Trying to tempt me to forget the garden, she brought me her ball. She's so distracting and cute.

Sophie just had some short rides barely worth mentioning as I'm still feeling pretty cautious about the saddle. I have a bodyworker person coming next weekend so that will be good for feedback.

Reggie is finally starting to level and fill out a little

A little more suspicious of our activities than Sophie is but I like letting them hang out while we do things in the yard, it doesn't normally take too long before they're hanging out and investigating everything. A really easy way for them to see a bit of the world and trust us a bit more.

He'd come visit and investigate then 'scare' himself and run back to his friends (definitely a game and not actually scared)

The boys are still pretty low key as far as any 'to do' lists. They get groomed, they get their feet handled, they go for short walks, they get reminders on basic manners. There's a long list of things I can see  need to be addressed (they're both very sensitive and reactive, Reggie in a 'chaos is fun and exciting' kind of way, Bakari in an actual 'this is worrying' way), but also the nice thing about babies is that there's really no rush and a little bit every day is far more productive right now than 'training' things head on. They're light years ahead of where they were when they arrived as far as trusting us and doing all the things. (I mean slow and steady feels like best case with every horse, but baby ponies brains fill up so quickly you really aren't tempted to push anything.)

Buck is a lot more reliant on his friends so he just grazes and naps up closer to them. He can be curious and he's actually super friendly, but he's a lot more reserved and cautious than Sophie and Reggie are. He actually reminds me a lot of Bridget in a way.

Depending on what I'm up to with Sophie, I have a clinic booked in April that was originally for her, but I think it could also be fun to take the boys for a baby horse outing and short groundwork lesson.

Quick trip to town for lunch, with a Vancouver Island view reminding me why I like it here

Looks like the beautiful weather will be here for a couple more days then we'll be back to the usual. I'm loving every minute of it. It's so easy to feel depressed here with the never ending rain and cold so this has definitely felt like a nice vacation from it all.

There and Back Again

 I'm getting to be not so great at this blogging thing this spring.

I was having such a good start to the year, then of course we had a sore backed pony which led me down the inevitable rabbit hole of saddle fitting, tack issues, hormones, maybe we need a vet, maybe a smaller jockey, maybe the ulcers are back etc etc etc. That one can spiral fast (and of course I let it and went to Level 10 Worry rather than 'maybe we just overdid it on the day' :/)

It's still pretty early in the year, but our little detour did still impact a few of my plans and our calendar is clear through mid April. Which is fine, because the spring feelings are strong in the Banana Pony and the chaos levels are higher than ideal in all the creatures inhabiting our little backyard Ponyville.

Not helped by the beginning of March bringing absolutely ridiculous weather and leaving snow on the ground for a week.

 

Sophie's 'let me outta here' face. She gets out to graze most days but it's just so wet and everything is so muddy it's pretty limited right now. We've had numerous windstorms too, so it feels like it's been a part time job picking up all the branches and fixing fences.

I did of course have Sophie's saddle checked (it got a thumbs up which...I hope is true, lol I have no faith anymore) but I also added this thinline pad because I thought it might be the safest thing that might help but also not impact the saddle fit. I went down the rabbit hole of looking for actual science on any of them and came up pretty empty, but here, take my money anyway, I guess. She also got a new (Stubben Equi-soft) girth which is kind of a 'meh' for her currently, but I think once summer comes or if I clip her it will be a win (she's annoyed by her winter coat getting caught/laying the wrong way in it so we're sticking with her sheepskin crescent girth most days). It's actually slightly fascinating how loose you can leave the Stubben girth though and still have it doing it's job. 

Doing something about that fence behind her is my other current part time job. It's horse safe, but it's on it's last legs. As you might be able to see in some of my pictures, the neighbours on both sides have a lot of stuff piled or built right up against us. We've been slowly reclaiming the space and replacing fences and planting hedges. That rock pile behind her is also a work in progress, I would like to get them installed before we put the ring footing down.

Kitty Judge at E

The obvious of having the vet take a look isn't as obvious as you'd first think because the vet visits us once a month and is very busy in her own practice, so I'm looking at mid April for non emergent appts. But, fingers crossed Sophie seems pretty happy (and has a bodywork person coming to take a look in a couple of weeks) so I'll let it wait.

No turnout plus windstorm meant I had some regrets this day.

Speaking of vet visits, the terrible twosome are in need of gelding. I might actually take them over to the vet clinic on the island for a special trip rather than wait the month or two for a local appt. Buck continues to be a pretty standard baby cob, my guy though is giving signs he'll be a much nicer gelding and that we should get that done soon-ish. Even if the cocky boy thing just who he is, being able to turn him out with adult horses (hopefully Sophie can do the job) will be a win for keeping him in check. I can't even believe I am implying there is any scenario where Sophie would bring chaos levels down, but I think we might have found one!

Fingers crossed for group turnout this spring

I thought the potted plants would look nice, but we're on version 2.0 of 'horses definitely wouldn't eat this plant (RIP expensive palm trees)' and yet they live to tear them apart and pull them out of the pots.

Been keeping track of how much they're growing. This isn't super accurate, just a weight tape and trying to measure height on a non level surface, but you can see the trend.

Weekly Happenings

 It's been about forever since a Bridget update! You'll remember she's with riding friends across town. I get very regular updates and ride with her new family every now and then, so in my mind she's always right here and good, but then I never actually give the blog proof of life.

Her little girl loves her and they make the perfect pair. Also B may or may not have found herself a new friend.

Meet the new friend, same as the old friend

Kidding, that's not Sophie...but he is definitely her twin and I find it pretty cute. I suspect he keeps much healthier boundaries than B and S did though (the fact he's sleeping peacefully next to her rather than jumping on her is my first clue lol)

The weather has still been unpredictable, but we've had some surprisingly nice breaks. Everyone gets a spa day when the sun shines, because I can't even with their winter coats this year and my lack of blanketing. They just get so gross in the constant rain and mud and being hairy ponies I've yet to find a brush that actually gets down to the skin. The no clipping or blanketing thing is not an experiment I'm eager to repeat.

Is shiny underneath it all. This guy always has little horse proportions, no awkward baby legs. I'm wondering if he's going to trend to the Bridget corgi pony end of the spectrum with the bigger body and shorter pony legs. He is an absolute sweetheart, I keep waiting for him to start being a boy but I feel like this guy would be one of those ones that was a stallion and you just wouldn't know, the whole bitey face, testing boundaries, showing off thing his 'brother' has going on is not in this guy's vocabulary at all. (but they are both getting gelded this spring, don't worry!)

remains completely awkward and his goofy personality only adds to it. We could blame it on the photo angle but really this is his current best angle. In motion is still one of the nicer moving cobs I've seen, so I'm holding out hope ;) 

the regular state of them (and their house) every morning. They are not tidy creatures.

Sophie's been enjoying green grass along with returning to some lighter riding. So far so good, the new girth maybe helps? Don't want to say too much and jinx anything!

is fuzzy

I've been pretty busy with work, but it's good. This is the time of year I work more in order to take more time off when the weather turns nicer so it's all part of the plan! 

Property wise, the to do list remains endless. The neighbours on one side have taken the initiative to build themselves a new fence, which is fantastic but also means we've been busy pulling out the ancient page wire disaster beside it that got left on 'our' side. At this point it's buried about a foot under ground and woven through several trees due to 40 years of neglect. I'll be happy to have it tidied up.

I had a 'genius' moment of raiding the scrap/dump pile for some old pallets and wood and bricks and made the ugliest arena drag. We have a proper harrow, but I really needed something to level the base back out without disturbing what's been compacted,

it worked shockingly well. Fingers crossed a few more times levelling and compacting and then we'll bring in some sand before summer.

Finally, an appreciation post for our cat, who does whatever he can to slow productivity

'Stop typing and admire me!'